These twelve extraordinary stories are set in contemporary Europe and recount the peculiar and amazing experiences that befall Latin Americans visiting or living abroad. An ailing Caribbean ex-President is befriended in Geneva by an ambitious ambulance driver and his headstrong wife. Margarito Duarte comes to Rome from the Colombian Andes with a box the shape and size of a cello case in order to show the Pope its contents. A woman who wears a snake ring with emerald eyes and is known only as Frau Frieda to the Latin American students in Vienna makes a living by telling her dreams to wealthy families. A pretty Mexican music hall performer is returning to Barcelona when her car breaks down, and she ends up in an insane asylum. In Tuscany, a vacationing family visits a Renaissance castle now owned by a famous Venezuelan writer and meets up with a phantom. Maria dos Prazeres, once Barcelona's most sought-after lady of the night, has a dream in which death appears, so she begins to plan her own funeral. A widow dressed in the habit of Saint Francis sails to Rome from Argentina to meet the Pope. A beautiful Caribbean boy is driven mad in Spain. A German governess destroys the summer for her wards - and is herself destroyed. Billy Sanchez takes his pregnant wife with a cut on her ring finger to a hospital in Paris - and never sees her again. Once again in this breathtaking collection, Gabriel Garcia Marquez invites us into worlds of majesty and magic, from which we emerge spellbound.

Contents:

• Prologue: Why Twelve, Why Stories, Why Pilgrims
• Bon Voyage, Mr. President
• The Saint
• Sleeping Beauty and the Airplane
• I Sell My Dreams
• "I Only Came to Use the Phone"
• The Ghosts of August
• Maria dos Prazeres
• Seventeen Poisoned Englishmen
• Tramontana
• Miss Forbes's Summer of Happiness
• Light Is Like Water
• The Trail of Your Blood in the Snow